Vile Tiny Children and Their Vile Tiny Teeth

 Some little weeble has been eating my tomatoes right off the vine!! Just standing there on his way to school every morning chowing down on raw tomatoes; even a couple of green ones which he threw down, evidently not caring for the flavor. I know it's a kid because I found that discarded green tomato with his little teeth marks in it; I know it's a he because I Just Know.

I went from zero to GET OFF MA LAWN instantly!

Unfortunately there weren't any little kids nearby to hang the blame on or I would have in that moment. I mean Lost My Shit. Grr I was pissed!!

Then I thought to myself 'FFS it's only tomatoes, get a grip' which was nicer of me, but I'm just not that adult so back to GET OFF MA LAWN it was. 

Except that judging from the size of the toothmarks he's probably a kindergartener, so it was back to 'Aw poor little goon' except he broke a couple of good sized branches so now it's back to GET OFF MA LAWN and so it will stay.

File under First World Problems.

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Jon may have guessed my other secrets, but he didn't guess that I am writing a cookbook. Not one for the general public, though -  one for my aging ass, because I'm forgetting how to make such El Apartmento basics as Chicken Livers Mit Schmalz, Wino Barf*, and The Spice. Now as long as I don't forget how to read I'll be all set.

One of the recipes I don't want to forget is this marinara recipe that kicks ass, and it comes from, of all people, my MOTHER.  Yet fear not!

  seriously! fear not, my good humans! she only had one recipe, but it's a really good one!  

also deal with this guys' little pink toeses! EEE! 

and also deal with the tiny head sticking out of his hairdo spitting a tiny waterfall which, dang.

not that I am disparaging anybody's religious imagery

having been raised with this kind of thing I am something of a connoisseur
     

RECIPE! OK!

House of D Greenwich Marinara

 

Makes enough for 2 huge helpings of spaghetti or three reasonable ones.

No substitutions.

 3 16 0z. cans of plain tomato sauce. Buy premium. 

    -Dump into a pot big enough to hold the following ingredients. 

2 bone-in pork chops, rinsed of hemoglobin and fried medium brown on both sides

    -Put the pork chops straight into the sauce and begin bringing the heat up to medium. Save the pan         and it's fond, you'll be using it later! 

Meanwhile, be chopping up some:

   

- white bermuda onion

 -green bell pepper

 -a small bit of minced carrot

 - celery or celery leaves

...enough to make 1 cup of material.

-also have on hand red wine for deglazing

 

-and some regular plain olive oil, not extra virgin - or use neutral cooking oil, or unsalted butter - enough to fry the above 4 ingredients, using the same pan you did the pork chops in. 

   

 -Simmer the above four ingredients in the oil or butter or what have you, until the onions are                     beginning to brown. Then...

   

 -Deglaze with red wine and dump it all into the tomato sauce

  

Now add:

fresh oregano, 1 tsp minced

ground rosemary, to taste

salt and pepper to taste

2 tbls of black coffee, arabica or robusto. (Or 1 tbl of black espresso.)

Let this cook for at least 2 hours on low. Taste as you go along. Top up with water if necessary. The longer this goes the better. (Letting it sit overnight in the fridge and heating it up for dinner on day 2 is perfect!)

 Do not leave out the black coffee!

Serve over regular spaghetti noodles. None of your fancy woo woo shapes. The pork chops are fall-apart good.

Dang just writing this is making my mouth water.

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*Yes, Wino Barf is a recipe, and it is for ravioli filling, which was notably described by someone lo these many years ago as looking like Wino Barf. I say it depends on what the wino has been eating. In the case of Wino Barf, it was chopped spinach and mushrooms.

 

Das flooten pooten blacken gracken

More unsophisticated encounters with booze!

Years ago, I used to make Vermouth chicken, which was just chicken baked in 2/3 cup of vermouth with some shallot and butter, salt and pepper. It was DELICIOUS. But because this was something I used to cook for two previous significant others (who turned out to be not so excellent), I decided to drop it from the ol' repertoire. 

But then I thought 'Hey. I've been with this one for 43 years. Maybe the Curse of the Vermouth Chicken is broken.'  So last week I had The Biker go hit the liquor store and get me some dry white vermouth.  This is the little tiny thing he brought back:

About split size     

...and he claimed that not only was it the only vermouth for sale, it was as expensive as Grey Goose vodka.

"Oh no," I thought. 

"But then really, how different is one vermouth gonna be from another?" I also thought.

And so I used it.

After 10 minutes my place smelled like a chicken that needed to join AA. It was AWFUL. Our eyes were burning!  Even worse was the taste - straight white liquor with a strong, oily flavor of lavender.  

I was able to salvage the chicken, although I literally had to rinse it under the tap and then hide it under a Mexican sauce.  

The only use I can think of for this vermouth is if you had to run an alcohol burner under a chafing dish, and wanted the room to smell like burned lavender.

I'm certain one of you clever people out there know what 's up with this stuff, or about vermouth in general, or even about both things. Please clue me in.  The stuff I used to use was like a Liebfraumilch with a flavor of thyme.  This stuff tasted like brake cleaner. 

                                                   Yes I know what brake cleaner tastes like.

Tater Chip Soul Trip

  OMGWTFBBVQ!!!!! 

LETS HAVE A MILDLY GAY GARDEN PARTRY!!!!! 

Everybody dress in your prettiest summer frock! We'll drink white wine and talk about our IUDs!!

The boids is zinging, the Republicans are changing colors, the crisp Fall hair is full of the dust of Egypt, and tumbleweeds, and even tumblecrap:

  actual ball of Idaho tumblecrap. Idaho isn't really known for it's globular trash but perhaps it should be.  

                                                                here have an eyeball lift.

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  OMGFWTFBVQ!!!!!  

HERE IS MY GLORIOUS GARDEN ROOM WHERE I HAVE ALL MY GARDEN PARTIES!    

wouldn't this be divine? 

VOY LA!

only speak the name and she appears! and she brought whores doovers!

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  WHERES THE FOOD? DAMMIT WHERE'S THE FOOD?  ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!   

Everybody please calm down geeze. Here have some of

   a delicious trip back to the 1980's. 

see? it's safe. no mineral oil, no raw bird heads, just good ol' Bill Clinton, Whitewater deliciousness!   

Today I was feeling sassy so I decided to set up buffet style! 

So grab youse a plate and be sure and dish up some

   how we tell that Mrs. Irwin was a heavy smoker.  

My mother made me a

if you buy the mayonnaise, she'll make you one too.  

And speaking of our favorite things, dish up a scoop of

this is something that no gathering of the Bikers' ghetto fabulous Whatcom County relatives would be complete without - a bowl of sour green slop full of rapidly hardening bacon grease that everyone claimed was absolutely delicious. 

it is not.

not then, not now.

not ever.

no.

  Speaking of Divine, here's something from mothers' little oven:  

why Timmie died of a heart attack at 12

 

it wouldn't be one of my little parties without chow mein, and 

THIS IS NOT CHOW MEIN.

neither is thiGRAB A CAN OPENER VERNA THEY GOTS CHOW MEIN

do you hate fish? 

do you really hate fish? 

do you really super de duper hate fish? 

like i mean really really really hate fish? 

We celebrate diversity at this buffet table. You can celebrate it too with some

if it feels good? y'all, go ahead and put some pickle relish on your spaghetti and red sauce. just not where I can see it.

HEY I MADE YOU A SPECIAL TREAT don't all run out the door at the same time JON I SAW YOU SET THE RESTROOM TRASH ON FIRE BITCH

HEY

HEY

HEY I GOT

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NOTE:

Hell yeah I re-ran a  lot of my tired old stale recipes and wacky witty comments. This is my blag and I can, so suck on it.

bunny wabbit bunny wabbit bunny wabbit

 So here's the thing. Everyone likes Marcella Hazan. 

                        

The problem is, I am absolutely not able to work out of her cookbooks. 

Marcella has a lot of opinions. You'd better be familiar with those opinions too, because things have to be Marcella's way.  But Marcella doesn't always make "her way" terribly clear.*  No, let me restate that. She makes her way very very clear indeed, to the detriment of the damn recipe.

A one and a half page rant about salt.

Humble bragging: an early version, with a two page recipe for pasta salad ffs. You see what I mean about the organization? GAAH

Page one of a rant about authentic (HER) Italian cooking.

See, this fucks with my chi.  So I chucked her and went with the cookbook that Marcella taught herself to cook from:  Talismano della Felicita - The Talisman Italian Cookbook. 

This is not the rooty-toot version, the one written for first generation American born Italians, but this served my needs better. This is the abridged version, no foreign dishes, only Italian, written for an American public that was utterly fucking unfamiliar with the genre. 

It takes nothing for granted. It simply tells you how. And that's what REFERENCE is all about, dammit.

What bites me is wondering if Marcella, self-taught, having arisen fully formed like Venus from the sea, who cribbed her whole career from The Talisman, paid Ada Boni any, like, money? or even just gave her thanks publicly for her legacy. 

Was there anything else I could have done with that sentence? Nope.

____________________________  

Now me, I taught myself how to cook Italian out of this book vvv, and I did it starting back in 1968, because we didn't have video games in those days:

I am really sentimental about this little book.

I have no idea how this made it into my mothers house; it was just there. I used to read it when I was a little kid. Once I got over being afraid of the stove, I did the pasta recipe. Then I did the Ravioli. 

                                           

                                              (I am not saying I turned out restaurant quality.)

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I tantalized you with a mention a month or so back. Here it is:

This is all about Tony Bourdain. No bones about it. It's Tony the product, doing his best Tony here, giving us recipes that were favorites of his.   

If you don't want to cook out of it, just sit back and read the thing. It is a very entertaining read, particularly if you're a little high.

He takes no prisoners. None. This is his punk rock cookbook dammit. Don't expect anything, because this is basically everything, like someone kept all their recipes in a shoebox and dumped it out on their bed.  But it is also a workable damn cookbook. 

Some recipes are beginners' stuff, or just very basic, tasty things, and some are long, complicated, and use ingredients not found on this land mass.

He has Hamburger Rules.  He tells you to toast your fucking muffin. He lets you know that one dish had him 'shitting like a mink'. AND I LOVE EVERY WORD.

My house is strictly Bourdain. I mean omgwtfbvq we have this huge gaudy fuckin' thing on the wall in our kitchen. vvv 

                                                                 garbage wine for scale

If you are not a fan, and you have a stick up your ass, you won't like this cookbook much, because it is so very Tony©, and the word 'fuck' is thrown around pretty freely.  But because you can cook quite easily from it, it's a keeper as far as I'm concerned. 

Would I have gotten rid of it had it been a loser?  Fuck yeah. I'm hardass like that.

                                                               - well not exactly like that. ^ 

Imagine a very mean cheese.

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*Your mileage may vary!  I understand that! I just don't care.

I understand that this was Marcella's 'swan song' and that she's allowed a little leeway, that being the case. I understand that she was a strong personality, and that her 'Nonna Ballabusta' thing was part of her appeal; Marcella hads to get paid. (Whatever the tense is on poor grammar.)  I just find it busy, self-aggrandizing and poorly organized.

OOH LOOK BONUS RECIPE!

 

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I've been busy. I have!  And it's good news! I honestly have the most amazing personal news! I do!

Background:

Back in the 1970s the Niccolai Tour of Leonardo DaVinci's inventions came to my town, and all I had to do was to see it once and my imagination was aflame!  Then the Madrid Codices were rediscovered,  and in the international rejoicing and celebration of that event, forget it, I was in fangirl love with this towering genius of the late Medieval period, because dammit, he looked good naked and I liked his hat. Or how about 'Nobody draws sex between two consenting hemisected individuals like Da Vinci'?   Good shit either way.                                         

I needed to know everything about him. His life and times, the books he read, the subjects he studied, his materials and processes. I even taught myself a little Italian and a little ecclesiastical Latin to help forge onward through the fog. And when I humble brag about the Latin, know that I still have the bitemarks on my flesh from where I almost chewed off my own arm trying to learn the shit. (You learn your way, I learn mine.)

Last week I finally came to the other end of 53 years of obsession. That's not a bad thing. It's certainly not the end; I'll never be done!  Still, I was able to look back over my work, organize it, make it into something that tracks, and start on the next chapter!!!! 

  

I'm starting to wonder how much this had to do with some of the stress I've gone through recently. Some of it certainly could have been caused by all those years of mental effort, now  having reached the 11th hour, trying to finally become something. 

A year ago I wrote about an event that marked the closing of one chapter of my life and how it felt like I'd been given a set of wings; the most spiritual thing I've ever had happen to me. This feels similar. Imagine that a thousand beavers have built a dam across the Bosporus, and that Erich Von Danekins' Ark came along and fired bankrupt hotels into that dam 5 million times, and the dam broke and beavers went everywhere. That is nothing like what happened.

It feels fantastic.

I took on a project when I was thirteen years old and I stuck with it, and here I am at 66 years old able to turn to that (figurative) kid and say 'Look at what we did. Let's get drunk as shit. You're figurative. You can drink."

  I  Rock!